"As early as mid-December, consumers will be able to go to retail stores in the United States and Australia to purchase a Surface with Windows RT. Additional availability will be added in a number of countries in the coming months." Sales might indeed benefit from, you know, allowing the world to actually buy your halo product. Us Dutch won't be getting the Nexus 4 and 10 either.

I don't think Windows 8/Windows RT is closed (as opposed to Windows PHONE 8 which IS closed) for the following reasons:

- You get access to the full file system
- You can develop personal applications and even side load applications provided you have a Microsoft Account. There is no developer license needed to side load. Just run a simple Powershell script that Visual Studio generates, and share that along with the appx that it creates.

The one caveat is that to distribute the app you must sign it with a Windows Store registered account, but others can install your app via a simple PS script.